Mikey Lord, frontman of The Howling sits down with Amped to discuss the incredible reception the band have had only months into their career…
Words by Jackie Mills & Images by Lucy Cheyne | June 05, 2026
Straight off the back of a 5 week tour around Europe supporting Creeper, we are lucky enough to have Mikey Lord, frontman of The Howling to sit down with us to discuss the incredible reception the band have had only months into their career and what we can hope to see from them in the future.
That leads me straight into my first question, you’ve just finished your tour supporting Creeper, how was that experience?
Mikey – Absolutely magical. They are, far and away the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of touring with. They’ve been so welcoming, and they’ve really looked out for us and looked after us which is just so nice from a headline band or from anybody really. And the shows were brilliant too. Their fan base have been so welcoming and supportive with us. It’s just been brilliant. They’ve been some of the best shows I’ve ever played.
It’s been such an incredible experience, and we are so grateful because this band, we launched it in September last year. To go on a tour that long, that goes to all of these places. It’s crazy. This early on into a band’s life is absolute nuts. So we’re really, really grateful for it.
It is such an amazing opportunity. It seems online and on social media, the fans are reacting really positively. Are you feeling that reception when you’re on stage as well as on social media? There seems to be a lot of fan hype in response to your shows.
I mean I’m not massively across social media anymore. I try and sort of protect my brain a bit now.
Completely understandable.
But I am, I’m getting the vibe, for sure. It’s like at each show as well, it’s the level of excitement is sort of ratcheting up. People are hearing about the previous shows and then there’s something to look forward to.
That’s so exciting. Again, from my social media research, I saw that you play a cover of Madonna’s Like a Prayer live at shows.
Yeah we’ve been playing Like a Prayer on that tour and still in our shows now.
That’s amazing. I love alternative covers from other genres. I think it’s such a fun thing to do. Are there any others that you’ve got in your back pocket, or any others that you’d love to cover that might take people by surprise? You know, a bit of Backstreet Boys with synchronised dancing perhaps…
I’d love to do Backstreet Boys. When we did our first shows back in January, we did a show in London at Blondie’s and one at a place called Castle Hotel in Manchester. They were properly awesome gigs. They were really, really fun and they were sold out months ahead. It was so exciting. But we kind of just wanted to introduce ourselves to the world in our own way and try and have control over that moment.
It would’ve been great to have a big support slot or something be our first show but I think it was cooler that we got to do a place like Blondie’s in London. That was our first show as The Howling, and we got to deck it out and make it feel like it was all our world, and really try and give people a show that was ours, that we were in control of. But we’re a brand-new band, and we have seven originals that we play live at that point at least. So it was like, can we justify having a headline show with that many songs? So we did whack a couple of covers in and we did do Like a Prayer, but we also did, and it is still in the back pocket for the occasional treat, Gimme Gimme by ABBA.
Oh, amazing. I bet that went down well.
It did, yeah!
I think that’s the thing about the alternative music crowd. We love our alternative music, but if you throw in a banger from the pop genres or anything they just go wild.
Yeah, they do. And it’s just really fun as well to play with something like that and try and make it… I mean, these songs are just great songs, and I think the thing about great songs is you can Frankenstein and rip them apart, stretch and change bits of them, and they stay great songs no matter how you do them. You know what I mean?
Yes absolutely! Well, that sounds really fun. So after a few more support shows, you’ve got a slot at Download Festival, how are we feeling about that?
Yeah, it’s really exciting. Again, just one of those things that we’re just crazy grateful for. For a band that’s around for five minutes, you know? It’s going to be amazing to get to play that and to just be around all that energy for that weekend and we’ll be able to see Creeper again, ’cause we miss them, having spent a month just living with them basically.
I can imagine!
We’re just really grateful to get to do it. I’m really, really looking forward to it.
It should be a lot of fun. Download’s always a good weekend, isn’t it? So what’s the dream festival? Obviously, we’ve got Download on the go, but if you could do any of the worldwide, ’cause some of the American festivals are just insane. Is there a dream festival to get your name on?
They are insane. If it ever came back in full force, I would love to do Warped Tour.
Oh, my gosh. That would be incredible.
That was when I was a kid and wanting to be in a band, that was always the image I had in my head. That’s what I was visualising was, you know, a car park somewhere in the Midwest, baking heat.
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s what I think all the alternative kids from the Noughties would love to have back full force.
Oh, sure, yeah.
I think for me if I could ever get out to see When We Were Young. For me, that’s the new “it” festival.
Oh, yeah. I’d love to do that one. I’d love to just go, to be honest. I remember when they announced the first lineup for When We Were Young, I remember thinking… ‘Cause it was all, like, stickers. And I remember thinking it looked like my notebookwhen I was a teenager. I thought, “That’s cool!”
Also, can you imagine seeing that many goths and emos just in Las Vegas all at once? Like, it needs to be experienced.
Of course!
So your debut EP, “Salvo”, came out on the 22nd of May. For anyone that is discovering you from that music, what would you describe your sound and the vibe of that collection of music to be?
I would say we are an alternative rock, punky, theatrically fun-loving band. And that’s what to expect on that EP, really. It’s definitely a case of no two songs sounding quite the same and I like that a lot. I like my bands like that. I like it to feel like there’s left turns and I’m really excited to see what people think of it.
Yeah. I’ve had a listen, and I think it’s a great sound that you’ve got going! I think on some of them, particularly Murder Capital, that for me has a vintage My Chemical Romance vibe. You know the Three Cheers album? that sort of sound.
Who would you say has been musically inspiring you when you’ve come to write?
Oh, there’s been definitely a lot of My Chem. I would say there’s a lot of Ghost. That’s kind of one that we’ve kind of been really drawing on recently. AFI. We all love AFI. I would say in a lot of the guitar work, there’s loads of Avenged Sevenfold happening. It’s very much all over the place, but again, that’s kind of what I like, you know?
I’ve got what I bring to the table. Al’s (Bass) got what she brings to the table. Growing up, I never put my feet into AFI as a band and it’s only since Al has kind of introduced me to that, that it’s really found a place on our list of influences. It’s stuff that I would never consider sort of to draw upon. And it’s pulling from everybody’s directions.
That’s great! It’s great to have so many musical influences and be able to mould it into a new sound.
I always get obsessed with lyrics. And I think, on Unholy, your line of “You’ve got a lot of nerve and so much to learn. You can’t shine before you burn,” is really great. So I was wondering what are your favourite lyrics on the EP that you think the fans are going to really connect with?
Oooh, I don’t know about what people are going to connect with ’cause I find that’s quite hard to predict. I know people have pulled lyrics from the first single, Little Promises, and mentioned those in specific. And I would never have considered those. There’s a line where I just say, “moonlight and tragedy” and someone was talking to me about how obsessed they are with that little collection of words. And I was like, “wow,” you know? I just wouldn’t have thought that. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it. But it doesn’t feel like it’s a particularly profound couplet or anything.
So I genuinely don’t have an answer for you other than to say that I find it really hard to predict what will connect and what won’t. I’m really proud of the lyrics in Unholy. And I like the line that you pulled out a lot.
Maybe it’s the imagery. I can imagine it’ll probably inspire quite a few tattoos and things like that. Have you seen any tattoos on tour yet?
Yeah, we have actually! We’ve had a couple tattoos. Which, again, is just mad. I used to be in a different band, and we used to sell lyric sheets. And we would get an order of a lyric sheet in, and I would sit down, I would write it out. But I would always have to Google what my own lyrics were. Because I would just sit there, blank face, you know?
My final question, kind of wrapping up. Obviously 2026, you’ve had your sold-out headline shows, supporting Creeper, first EP, Download. It’s a mega year already so what can fans expect beyond 2026?
Beyond 2026? Who knows? I want to keep things up. I want to keep going. I want to keep busy. I just want to stay on tour all the time. I love being on tour. If I was on tour 10 months out of 12, I’d be happy, you know?
Yeah. I think there’s just something about that live music environment, isn’t there? It’s completely different to anything else you can do in life. I can’t imagine it being on stage, that’s just from a fan perspective.
Yeah, me and William from Creeper we just keep talking about how we’re all just circus people. And we just love it. It’s such a silly thing to get to do and I love doing silly things, and I want to do it all the time. I would say hopefully people can expect a lot more of that.
Definitely. Well, it certainly seems that you’re getting the fan reaction and the industry support, from bands like Creeper and Download Festival supporting you so early on. We definitely look forward to seeing where you end up!
“Salvo” is OUT NOW, check out The Howling’s latest music video for The Murder Capital below:
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